Welcome to the Mac OS MUD Zone: Servers

LDMud started as a project to clean up and modernize Amylaar's LPMud gamedriver.
Primary goals are full documentation, a commented source body and
out-of-the-box support for the major mudlibs, of which the commented source body has been
pretty much completed. During the course of work a lot of bug fixes and improvements
found heir way into the driver -- much more than originally expected, and definitely enough to
make LDMud a driver in its own right.

But LDMud is a slow burn project for Lars, so keep that in mind as you use it. Nevertheless,
it's wonderful what doors Mac OS X opens, huh? :-) Thanx to Otto Rasanen.

SlashMUD
SlashMUD is an Open Source, Macintosh-based MUD. SlashMUD is fully object-oriented and
includes many unique features. Much customization can be done by editing the data files
and by writing a SlashMUD Plugin (or of course editing the source code).

Clan Lord
Although not truly a MUD, it fulfills much of the same purpose of being a multi-user
role-playing and gaming environment. Looks pretty cool, but haven't tried it since
it's a commerical effort.

PennMUSH for Mac
PennMUSH for Macintosh, by Dan Williams, is a port of the popular PennMUSH server to the Mac OS.
There's a version for "classic" Mac OS, plus you can find a version for Mac OS X/Darwin on
Dan's site as well.

27 July 2003 - I haven't been able to connect to the mac.pennmush.org web site for some time, so I've
updated the above link to go to the main PennMUSH page. It's also my understanding that the regular
*nix distribution of PennMUSH works just fine under Mac OS X so you can give that a try. Ah, the joys
of Unix/Linux/BSD and Mac OS X. :-)

DikuMUD for Mac OS
Dan Williams (author of PennMUSH for Mac) has ported DikuMUD to Mac OS.
This port was a one-shot deal and will NOT be maintained by Dan (he has other projects
consuming his time). He will deal with issues (not bugfixes) with the port
until someone decides to volunteer to pick it up, now that the hard work is
done. (not me -Hsoi) ;-)

This archive also includes a tutorial on how to port MUD servers to (classic) Mac OS. I maintain
a local mirror of this archive here.

TinyMUSH/Mac
TinyMUSH is a descendant of TinyMUD, both multi-user servers for text-based,
interactive worlds, traditionally deployed on a unix system. The TinyMUSH/Mac
project is a continuing effort to bring this to the Macintosh.

MacGoesMOO
MacGoesMOO (MGM) is a port of the LambdaMOO 1.8.0p6 server to Mac OS, with a few custom
additions, like support for an in-MOO source-level debugger, support for plugins, etc.

12 Feb 2001 - It has come to my attention that MGM is a dead project. On 8 Feb 2001, Steve Caron posted to the MGM
mailing list saying: "MGM is no longer being developed or supported (well, perhaps just a little). This is due
to college and a full-time job. Ah, how real-life intrudes."

Steve's email continues: "To answer your other question, about why the web server that MGM used to
reside on no longer exists... the hard drive suffered a major meltdown. I was able to restore the
MGM files after a lot of poking around, but by the time, interest in MGM seemed to have dwindled. You
can find the complete set of MGM files at: ftp://ftp.merphle.com/pub/MOO/.
This includes the source files, as well as some additional plugins. Finally, MGM never made it out of
beta phase, simply because we did not have enough time/manpower to fully stress-test it. From what
we've seen, it seems to be reasonably bug-free (tho not as fast as we had hoped). Thanks for your
interest! :)"

MUD/Mac OS
This was a collection of MUD servers ported to run on Classic Mac OS (Mac OS 8 and 9),
including SMAUG, Envy 2.2, and ROM 2.4b4. The ports were done by Chris
Jacobson . However, some time ago the files were lost in
various server transitions, so unless some kind soul still has the original distribution
archives and is willing to send them to me to host locally on my server, they're lost
to the world.

But ths loss really isn't the end of the world. The main reason ports like these were done was
because traditional MUD code distributions were written for Unix systems, and that didn't mesh
well with how Classic Mac OS worked (especially regarding the networking support). Now that
Mac OS X is out, you've got yourself a world-class Unix-like system (Darwin, a BSD flavor, to be specific).
Most MUD distributions can be compiled out of the box and run on Mac OS X just fine. If
they don't work out of the box, it should just take a little tweaking to make the code
work. If the thought of that scares you, you should reconsider trying to run a MUD server
since running a MUD server requires programming skill and knowledge. You can find all sorts
of MUD distributions at the ftp.game.org archives.

2 December 2001 - Austin Clemens emailed me some instructions on
getting the original/Unix ROM 2.4b6 source code to compile under Mac OS X (apparently it doesn't
compile "out of the box"). I've not confirmed these instructions, just passing along the
information that was passed along to me.

Start with the stock/original/Unix ROM 2.4b6 source code.

Remove srandom declaration from db.c.

Remove malloc.h from save.c.

Change gcc to cc in Makefile.

Add -Dunix to the C_FLAGS in the Makefile.

Build/make as usual.

CircleMUD
CircleMUD is a long-standing DikuMUD variation,
and is considered to be a great, stable codebase for a MUD server. It's small on initial
features, so it gives you a lot of room for growth, and customization.

CircleMUD has been ported to just about every platform under the sun. Off the main
CircleMUD Web and FTP sites you will find what you need to get Circle running on Mac.

On 27 October 2000, I compiled the CircleMUD 3.0p17 source stock on Mac OS X public beta.
I downloaded the source, followed the README.UNIX instructions (working totally on the
command line in Terminal), and it worked without a hitch. Nice job!

MacMOO Server
This is a VERY OLD (and probably no longer works) port of the MOO server to the Mac.
It's pretty ugly, but this
README file might be of some use to you, if you're brave enough (or lazy enough)
to try to get this running.

MacMUD
MacMUD is an LP Mud server that hasn't been updated nor been known to work in a long time
(it doesn't seem to sit well with PPC-based Macs nor Open Transport). If you'd like to try to
get it working, feel free to
download the source code.

MacDGD
DGD (Dworkin's Generic Driver) is a mud server that uses the same overall design as
Lars Pensj's LP server. However, DGD uses less memory (disk-based) and can dump state
and later restart from that state.

MacMERCMacEnvyMUD
These are ports of MacMERC and EnvyMUD to run as single-user entities on Mac. They are
terrible and lame and I wouldn't recommend anyone wasting the time to download them -- you'll
just be disappointed (I should know, as I'm the one that did these ports). However, they are still useful as a reference point if you perhaps
wish to make them work (get GUSI)
and/or port other MUD codes to the Mac.